Publishing Hub: I've finished writing my book. Now how do I get it published with CompletelyNovel?

Oliver - Lord of the reads: +3092

Hi Dean,

That is great news! I hope the process wasn’t too tortuous. Having said that I’ve heard people say that the more tortuous the editing the better the book is in the end.

On CN we have the Book Creator to guide you through the publishing process. It should give you all the information you need. You can start from your portfolio page under ‘my home > my portfolio’. There is also a publishing guide available as a PDF which you can download from this page:

Publishing guide

ISBN

If you want an ISBN for your book I would recommend getting one before you start. You will probably want to add a page into your manuscript with the ISBN and it will be added to your cover as well.

The easiest way to buy an ISBN at the bottom of each page of the Book Creator.

An ISBN can also be done by visiting My Home > My Portfolio > Plan and then clicking the ‘Buy site services’ button.

Once you have bought an ISBN don’t forget to apply it to your book during the Book Creator otherwise it won’t be used!

Manuscript formatting

At CN we use two common sizes of book:

Demy (about 222 × 148 mm). This is considered a pocketable/baggable book suitable for convenience reading and so more popular for fiction. Doesn’t have much room for diagrams, pictures or charts but the narrower pages make reading prose easier.

Crown (about 195 × 292 mm). This is a larger book with more room for more complex layouts such as images with annotations. It is a little big for putting in a handbag but still pretty manageable. We selected this as it is the most popular size for reference and non-fiction.

If you are using MS Word I would recommend that you make all your changes in MS Word and upload your word document. Make sure you read through the publishing guide and watch Anna’s formatting guide videos found in the manuscript step of the publishing process before uploading your manuscript. You can also see this page for hints and tips on typesetting and formatting.

Cover

To make creating a cover easier we have built a Cover Creator application right into CompletelyNovel. After you have uploaded your manuscript you will be able to access the cover step of the Book Creator.

The Cover Creator allows you to add images and text to build your cover. When you click to save we will automatically generate a print-ready PDF from your work.

There are some great suggestions here as to how to create more advanced designs with the cover creator.

If you have hired a graphics professional you can upload a PDF directly to the Book Creator although I would recommend steering clear of this unless a professional is doing it. All the size information can be found in the cover step of the Book Creator. CompletelyNovel also offesr our own cover design services. There are more details about that on this page.

Finishing off

After your book is set up, manuscript uploaded and cover made you can set the price of the book. Once that is done you need to download all the PDF files and check them thoroughly. You can then ‘publish’ the Book Creator which creates a printable book.

You can then order a proof copy to check the book through.

If you want to make a revision just enter the Book Creator again and make any changes you need to make and re-publish it.

When you have checked the proof copy and are happy for the book to go live you can set the book’s visibility to ‘public’. This will mean it will appear in the CN listings.

Distribution

After the book is published and visible you can explore distribution and promotion options but this is another question!